Karen Widdicombe celebrates 75 years of the All England Law Reports
Seventy-five years ago, in February 1936, the first of a series of general law reports in a startling new form was published. Accurate, authoritative reports of cases had long been available; the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting (ICLR) had started reporting cases in 1865 and the jumble of the “nominate” reports had come to an end. But the authoritative reports were being published slowly. Stanley Bond, the chairman of Butterworths, had a radical idea—a series that published weekly.
Trend setter
The series was named the All England Law Reports; company lore has it that Mr Bond was keen on tennis and took the idea of the series’ name from the pre-eminent All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Weekly publication proved such a popular and successful idea that the ICLR started its own weekly series, the Weekly Law Reports, in 1953. The trend for faster publication of judgments was set.
By judicial appointment
Reports of judgments in All ER have always been judicially approved prior to publication. Nowadays, with
